Samsung ATIV Tab 3 hands-on: Android-sized Windows 8 tablet

Today Samsung has announced the Ativ Tab 3 – a tablet, utilizing an Atom CPU to runs Windows 8.

We got a chance to spend some time with the Ativ Tab 3 and we snapped lots of pics.

The impressive thing about the ATIV Tab 3 is that it’s almost as thin and light as the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1 – it measures 8.2mm thick (vs. 8mm) and weighs 550g (vs. 510g) but it’s a full blown Windows 8 tablet (note: not RT).

The 10.1″ display has 1366×768 resolution, which is a very common laptop display resolution and a little higher than the Tab 3 10.1. It’s S Pen enabled too, so you can use it as a graphics tablet.

Windows 8 runs on an Intel Atom Z2760 a dual-core, four thread processor (Saltwell) clocked at 1.8GHz with 2GB of LPDDR2-800 RAM and PowerVR SGX 545 GPU.

The tablet packs microUSB and microHDMI ports and a microSD card slot and 64GB of storage. There’s a SIM card slot too, for mobile Internet connectivity. On the back is a 720p camera with LED flash and a 720p front-facing camera. There are stereo speakers, one on the left and one on the right side of the tablet.

The Samsung ATIV Tab 3 comes with Microsoft Office Home and Student out of the box.

The optional QWERTY keyboard dock will help if you’re going to do a lot of text editing. There’s no trackpad though. The dock doesn’t have a laptop-like hinge that holds up the screen, instead you have to use a magnetic cover on the back (similar to smart covers we’ve seen on certain tablets).

The Samsung ATIV Tab 3 will ship in early August for $699, keyboard dock and all.